So I have not actually experimented with the HC05 Bluetooth Module yet, but I have read up about it and watched some videos. From what I understand, you cannot use one module (master) to communicate with more than one other module (slaves), or at least its pretty difficult. But, you can use a module hooked up to an arduino to communicate to to another module hooked up to another arduino (I believe pretty simply).

However, I thought it might be possible to use an Arduino Mega (because it has multiple TX/RX pins) with 3 HC05 Bluetooth modules, to each communicate to 3 separate HC05s which would each be hooked up to an arduino nano. I know this might have to do something with running multiple Software Serials (I have no idea what that is to be honest)?

The project involves using the master arduino to "listen" for a button pressed on the slave arduino (across the room without connecting wires), then listening for another button press from one of the other slaves in some sort of sequence and within a certain time frame.

Does anyone have any idea about how this might be done, even if it doesn't use the HC05 Bluetooth Module?

1 Answer
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Yes, this is possible. According to arduino.cc, the Arduino Mega has 4 hardware serial ports, so you can connect 3 HC-05 modules and still have 1 serial interface left. The Mega is a good choice, when you need this many serial interfaces, so at this point you don't even need SoftwareSerial. You will have to configure the HC-05 modules correctly from the master and command them to connect to the correct slave modules.

About SoftwareSerial: The serial interfaces mentioned above are "hardware" interfaces, meaning, that the itself microcontroller contains hardware, that does the main part of the receiving/transmitting by itself, without any need for code. The Serial library then only adds a bigger buffer for the data, wrapper functions to write to it and reacts to the interrupts, that come from the hardware interface. But since most microcontrollers only have a very limited number of hardware serial interfaces (often only 1 or even none), the SoftwareSerial library comes in handy. It emulates the UART protocol (which is a more professional term for the Serial interface from the Arduino world) with software (and some help from interrupts). This means, that you can use it with any pair of pins and you can even define multiple interfaces with it. But it also has drawbacks. For example: Only 1 SoftwareSerial interface can listen at once, you cannot use high baudrates, it uses interrupts, that you might need for an application.

That said, I don't think, that Bluetooth is the best way to go, if you only want to test a small number of buttons per slave. It is simply too much hassle to configure the modules and establish the connections correctly. Instead you can use 433MHz radio modules. They don't involve such a complex protocol like Bluetooth does, so it's a very simple solution. In the simplest case, you only need transmitters for the slaves and a receiver for the master. Every slave can send a short identifier, if the button was pressed. The master can then receive this data. Of course, if more than one slave sends simultaneously, the data will be garbage. But as long, as this is not a problem, you can keep it that simple.

There are many tutorials on the web, that explain how to use these modules. You can even find libraries, that are ready to use.

Great answer! This is great because I originally tried tackling this project using the nRF24L01 module but it was by no means easy to jump into as an arduino beginner. I did a quick Google search and found this article about 433MHz modules: dronebotworkshop.com/433mhz-rf-modules-arduino I think this might be a lot better for my application!
– Ronbon04Apr 11 at 18:26